Holding Back On News Is Busch League

David Teel

The good folks at Anheuser-Busch have bestowed us with many a gem: talking frogs, medicated Clydesdales, Busch Light and Bud Bowl III to name a few.

If only they were as eager to share news about the Michelob Championship at Kingsmill.

The golf tournament, an annual fixture in James City County since 1981, apparently is doomed after this year's edition. Troubled by recession, rising costs and declining television exposure, brewery big hats are close to terminating their sponsorship, sources say.

Alas, no one at corporate HQ or the tournament office wants to chat. Bill Rammes, the event's chairman, issued a vague assessing-our-options statement two weeks ago but declined to answer questions.

The suspicion is that Anheuser-Busch hopes to delay an announcement until after the 2002 Michelob Championship, scheduled to conclude Oct. 6. The rationale: Why risk spoiling the tournament with bad news?

Oh, please. There's no way to hide or sugarcoat this for nine months. Word of the Michelob's impending demise has spread to other PGA Tour events, with the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic preparing to assume the early October date.

So go ahead, Anheuser-Busch. Don't spare our feelings. Tell us if our chances are bleak. Tell us if the deal's already done. Remind us that money talks and all else walks.

We're used to it.

The LPGA walked away 10 years ago. Its tournament in Hampton Roads produced classic champions such as Kathy Whitworth, Amy Alcott, Juli Inkster and Dottie Mochrie. But when title sponsors Farm Fresh and Crestar bailed, a 14-year tradition vanished.

The NHL, in its most recent expansion, jilted us for Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, for heaven's sake. No offense to the city that once incarcerated O. Henry for embezzlement, but losing a hockey team to Columbus is rather humbling.

Losing a basketball team to New Orleans isn't much better. That's what transpired last week when the NBA's Charlotte Hornets named the Big Easy as their next port of call.

From their messy finances (monthly deficits of at least $1 million) to their weasely owners (George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge), the Hornets are no prize. Yet Norfolk officials, determined to land a major-league sports franchise, courted the Hornets for months. They lobbied NBA administrators, sucked up to Shinn and Wooldridge and crafted an arena financing plan.

None of it worked. Unless their fellow owners block the move, Shinn and Wooldridge will take their troubled team to New Orleans, where the jazz, sleaze and blackened redfish are unrivaled, but where the basketball heritage is dubious.

Rejection? We know rejection.

Many of the PGA Tour's elite rejected the Michelob Championship because of its placement on the schedule -- too close to the British Open in July, too removed from the heart of the season in October. Tiger Woods never played here, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, Fred Couples and Davis Love III rarely.